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Let's Talk About Ping. At What Point Do You Start Actually Noticing A Difference To Your Gameplay?


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#101 Dauntless Blint

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Posted 15 March 2015 - 02:11 PM

Location:New Zealand,best ping was at about 135ping (years back),now its about 230 -300 or more,guesstimation of an average of 250ping.
Some things I have noticed have been server side missile lock failure after client side audio cue and like wise Gauss cycle failure after visual/audio cues,sometimes effecting half my shots.

Much the same experience with the rest of the Aussies as far as HSR and leading targets,sometimes having to hit the air in front of a target to hit it with lasers.It wouldn't be so bad if it was consistent.

A game with 230 ping can mean twice the damage of a game with 250ping or higher in my gut feeling...

#102 9thDeathscream

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Posted 15 March 2015 - 02:28 PM

Yep I ping around 260 I am located between Sydney and Canberra AU.

Right now.
Lasers Bad, waste of time as 50% time they dont register. Even on slow moving targets
Ballistics Ok,they seem to register well.
Missiles, Bad, seem only to register about 50% of the time.

The Enemy damage indicator doesnt seem to update properly. Very slow even on solid hits.

I feel ripped off, i cant damage the enemy properly but i drop really easily on my end.

Forked out a lot of money and this is still an issue even after all these years. This is disappointing. I feel if we had an alternative a lot of people would have left.

#103 XX Sulla XX

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Posted 15 March 2015 - 05:58 PM

For a long time my ping was 80-120. Then I had a while where I had some problems where it would be in the 200-2000 range. Now on average I am in the 55-75 range. What I have seen is its depending on the person you can notice even the difference between 55-120 and when you get up to 200 plus it makes a bid difference. You can play in 200 range its just not as good. As ans Lynx said the really high pings make you see lots of teleporting and other odd problems.

#104 Kshat

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Posted 15 March 2015 - 10:00 PM

I usually got around 100ms - citing the ingame measurement - and this fluctuates seldom +- 5ms.
Movement is more or less okay, aside from the bogus when people run or jump and you're sticked to another mech, rubberbanding around for some seconds.

Laserhitreg is wonky, sometimes absolutely perfect, sometimes almost nonexistent. ballistics seem to be fine, LRMs I would deem so, too.
The issue lies with SRM and PPC. SRM are even more wonky than laser in regard to hitreg, and PPCs, especially ERPPCs, are driving me crazy. For example, hitting a light with them is wasted time, even when the hit indicator triggers. I got a game this weekend where a Mist Lynx ran straight up to my Panther and eating two ERPPCs to his center, his center torso flickered but the colour of his armour didn't change. The second time his right side flickered and took no damage. The third time his leg flickered, and nothing changed. So, from roughly 60 damage dealt, the armour of a Mist Lynx didn't change it's colour. Even when only one of my shots hit him, there should've been some change visible.
Don't take this for granted, but I would say that the issue is more prevalent with ERPPCs than with PPCs.

#105 RottenFoot

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Posted 16 March 2015 - 04:00 AM

From South Africa, my Ping runs at about 275-300ms. Anything above 300ms for my countrymen and play play become a lagging, jerky, rubber-banding mosh-pit with low to no hit reg. It would seem lag begins to be noticed when you get about 20-30ms above your "normal/average" Ping.

#106 EGG

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Posted 16 March 2015 - 04:51 AM

Just want to point out, some people seem surprised that the zoom takes longer to kick in at 100ms ping.

For those of us at ~300ms ping, it's like having to send a request via postcard each time you want another zoom level.

I can only imagine what having an instant zoom would be like. Actually... after 3 years of slow zoom, I'm not sure I can.

#107 Konphujun

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Posted 16 March 2015 - 11:57 AM

My ping is about almost always a rock solid 40. I tend to really only notice an issue on the rare occasions it jumps up to 110+.

#108 TB Freelancer

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Posted 16 March 2015 - 12:53 PM

I generally have a ping under 20 and while I notice a difference as it goes over 75, its entirely tolerable. But once it gets up to 100 or more I'll usually quit playing.

Things like zoom, advanced zoom and other things like targeting just seem to become too erratic.

At well under 50, things like zooming and targeting are near instant, but man once you're between 50 and 100 there's a slight hesitation but its so minor that its largely a non issue. But man once you're over 100 its just unbearable. It just seems like the lag times don't rise linearly but exponentially.

#109 MechWarrior414712

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Posted 16 March 2015 - 01:51 PM

Normally I sit at 160, which already is quite high and can be easily noticed via poor laser hit registering. Projectile-based weapons are ok as i've got used to the lead. Though on weekends my ping can spike over 200, which pretty much ruins my gauss/ppc.

#110 Jon Cunningham

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Posted 16 March 2015 - 05:43 PM

View PostOptimus Poes II, on 16 March 2015 - 04:00 AM, said:

From South Africa, my Ping runs at about 275-300ms. Anything above 300ms for my countrymen and play play become a lagging, jerky, rubber-banding mosh-pit with low to no hit reg. It would seem lag begins to be noticed when you get about 20-30ms above your "normal/average" Ping.


Who is your ISP?

We recently did some work with Internet Solutions to prioritize game traffic there.

#111 Dread End

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Posted 17 March 2015 - 06:43 AM

Lasers are useless with 260 + ping, please look into it, more gamebreaking than any other problem out there imho


EDIT: Also hit reg gets worse the closer the target is

Edited by Levels, 17 March 2015 - 06:44 AM.


#112 DeRazer

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Posted 17 March 2015 - 06:57 AM

Played @ steady 120ms and now @ steady 90 ms. Not much difference.

"High pingers" - greater than 200ms can be frustrating - especially in lights known to have hitbox issues (you know who I mean!).

The biggest issues don't seem to be ping related at all - the PPCs/AC20s that teleport through targets or evaporate on contact, the hugely variable laser hit registration, the shocking issues with massed SRMs where only 20% of them seem to do damage.

#113 Tombstoner

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Posted 17 March 2015 - 08:38 AM

Higher latency translates into more HSR errors and this directly improves survivability resulting in the need for better movement and positioning for focused fire.

Higher latency makes the game better.

#114 Divine Retribution

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Posted 17 March 2015 - 01:33 PM

My ping is usually 70-80ms from Phoenix, Arizona. I notice a difference when I hit about 130ms, but it may just be caused by jitter (sometimes fluctuates between 70 and 130ms) interacting with HSR.

But no matter my ping I still have to lag shoot, just the lead distance varies.

#115 9thDeathscream

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Posted 17 March 2015 - 07:14 PM

Not worth playing anymore. Hit detect is really bad. Lasers now almost useless.

I just put 4 Ac20 rounds and 4 srm6 rounds into a grashopper at 50 meters.He was standing almost still Didnt even penetrate armor.

No more money till Hit Detect is fixed.

more patches that come out worse it gets.

Its unplayable.

Pull your finger out for gods sake. I love the game. So ffs stop milking Mech releases and fix the issues.

Internode (IINET) Canberra region NSW Australia. (260-290ms)

#116 Zordicron

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Posted 17 March 2015 - 07:32 PM

I play around 400 ping.

Lasers are the only thing that are reliable, outside of ballistics on big slow targets.

MOST IMPORTANT: at this high a ping, laser duration, and ballistic travel speed, become MAJOR factors in reliable hits. IMO, that is because of packet loss. MPL out perform ML by almost 2 to one for me, for example. An AC20 at point blank will work very well(except for convergance on a twin AC20 king crab, which makes it go haywire) but a 450M shot with an AC10 has about a 50/50 shot at hitting or shooting into a rock behind or two mech lengths to the side of where my crosshair was etc.

Ballistic speed translates directly to travel time at anything beyond brawl range.

LRM hit detection, well, say I am in my Awesome 8R LUMRPOCKOLYPSE. Of the 12 enemies, there are two, very very unlucky sods who will get full HSR from me and get instaganked. There are 3-4 others that will see a hit or miss effect, most salvos doing 2/3 dmg or so. The rest, well, One missile hits and gives me a red crosshair, but largley I can dump 400 MIssiles onto them and get yellow armor out of it. I don't play LRM anymore.

SRM are better. IMO, sometimes full salvos get eaten in packet loss, but it is correlated to distance and travel speed from what I can tell, like ballistics, but more reliable overall, sometimes I see delayed reactions but at least it counts.


So basically, whatever you guys did to lasers last BIG fix for laser HSR, made them go from poopy reliable to GO TO reliable, shorter duration the better. I also think that has subconsciously moved the games meta loadouts to laser boats, but thats another topic. SRM fix made them pretty solid overall, but I suspect that has to do mosre with the speed and distance then anything else. Ballistics havent changed in forever, Hitting a speedy target takes some real concentration to factor lag plus lead.

Occasionally, with any weapon, I run into an invincible mech. What I mean is, even at 50M, I have to lead the mech by 3 mech lengths or more, and my hits do paltry dmg if any. If it is early in a match, I just disengage and move on knowing the rest of my team will have the ability to pierce the lag shield( I dont know what is actually causing it, it's like a desynch almost, for just one enemy, for just me) If it is late in the match, I have poured 300+ dmg into hunchback CT's before and not stripped the armor off. Yes, it is that over the top bad. I have no idea what my aim looks like to other players when this happens, including my target, but I can manage red crosshairs once I adjust. It just doesnt do anything.


Anyway, for anyone reading this, if you would like to enjoy 400 ping, Visit Frontier Communications! you too can experiance 300ms ping to a hub 50 miles from your driveway. (OOKLA speed tests)

#117 NeoCodex

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Posted 18 March 2015 - 12:49 AM

My ussual ping varries between 150-210. It's playable. But let's talk issues.

General feel

There is little difference between 150 and 210 (it seems these are 2 different servers that I usually get put on), but both are still in the field of playable. But If it happens that something is taking up my bandwidth, my ping can double and as soon as it's higher than 300 than we're talking about unplayable, rubber banding, and so on. 200 I think is the absolute limit for still normal playing, tough far from perfect, because already at 200 there are considerable issues (described below).

The laser hitreg

Hitreg takess a bit of time to process - with my ping it's certainly not instant, and the delay is noticable. Now the funny thing is that with proper aim I can still hit fast moving lights consistently, that's both with AC20 from 200 meters and with gauss at 1000 meters - which probably means I have learned to compensate projectile + ping target leading for these, and the hitreg "seems" to be working normally.

But with lasers it's different. If the target is moving 100kph+, and I hold the aim directly on it, it will be slightly falling behind. So I actually have to do target leading with hitscan weapons for a few pixels ahead, while with projectiles I've allready compensated my ping in the prediction, so it's less noticeable and "seems" to be working fine. I don't know how game would play with below 100 ping, and I bet my target leading would be way too far in front if in that case. But while it's not perfect at the moment at least it's playable, if you learn to do the adjustments to your aim.

It's just the hitscan weapon I'm not too fond of and it's one of the main reasons I have always prefered ballistics and PPCs instead. While it might seem harder to use these weapons with higher pings, at least you learn to aim it properly because you know if you made a hit or not and can see exactly where it landed, while with lasers you can never be sure how much of the damage was spread all over the place. At least the ballistics are consistent. And the lasers are just not consistent enough for me, the hitreg delay is noticable and annoying, specially if you are poking with ER large lasers, you know you have to adjust your laser burning time on target before and after you fire and it just.. Doesn't feel right. It just doesn't feel right. And while majority of NA players may feel that the laser vommit meta is the best at the moment, it's very hard for me to use these builds and I will still stick to my gauss/ppc builds if possible (or at least very short IS pulse laser burn times), mostly because of the ping problems.

P.S. edit: it's funny that the poster above me is saying the opposite, that at 400 ping the lasers are the only reliable hitreg for him. But that's extreme ping. I guess nobody expects you to hit targets with projectile travel time at those pings, you can be lucky if you even hit anything at all, because above 300, as others said, the HSR really starts kicking in and you can see very common rubber banding, hence, I would probably stick to lasers at this ping as well. But as I said it's different for me.

UI LAG

If there's something else that's bothering me more than that would have to be the horrible UI delay that I'm surprised nobody is mentioning. when switching between night and heat vision, and zoom, and even target locking. While target locking works fine and is almost instant most of the time, the real issue is with activating any of the zoom or vision enhancements. Usually there's a 0.1-1.5 second delay when activating, and it's completely random and very annoying. Sometimes vision enhancements don't even activate. At all. So I have to double, triple tap it to get it working. You should really look into this. Also, last time I checked, this does not happen in training grounds (I think it was instant there). And before you ask, it's not my machine being slow - I am having steady 70-100 fps, but with 150-210 ping the delays in commands and sometimes the UI just not responding at all are extremely problematic.

Edited by NeoCodex, 18 March 2015 - 01:07 AM.


#118 Hayashi

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Posted 18 March 2015 - 03:52 AM

I have 280 ping, relatively stable. Anything traveling at up to 60 KPH acts normally. I have to aim one component ahead for the intended damage to register for 90-100 KPH, and for lagshielded lights at 150-170 KPH I must aim one mech length ahead to hit on target. Spiders and Firestarters are especially bad because their hitboxes seem wonky in addition to having to aim blind.

Other weird behaviour includes firing 24 Artemis SRMs to have them all pass through a target, and mechs that occasionally teleport when they collide with other mechs or buildings.

Edited by Hayashi, 18 March 2015 - 03:54 AM.


#119 KharnZor

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Posted 18 March 2015 - 06:32 AM

View PostMonkeyCheese, on 13 March 2015 - 12:03 AM, said:

Being an Australian from Brisbane my ping usually sits at 250-280ms which has for the past 3 or so years been perfectly manageable and I drive things like locusts...

It gets a little noticeable over 280ms but it really is the 300-350ms range is where it becomes usually 100% unplayable for me and shots really start to miss and the rubberbanding starts.


But overall bravo for having a NA based game that is still playable for most people around the world.

I'm just north of Brisbane and have the same ping range and likewise for when it gets unplayable

#120 Bhael Fire

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Posted 18 March 2015 - 02:07 PM

I typically see pings in the 80-100 range.

Anything higher than 140 becomes noticeably impactful (rubberbanding, slideshow fps, unresponsive controls, etc).

And forget anything higher than 240...I will disconnect from any match with a ping that high and try to reconnect with a better ping.





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